May 16, 2017

Whoops! Blooper confessions

"To err is human," said Alexander Pope. If such an acknowledged master acknowledges that errors are part of life, well, who am I to get all wound up about my own egregious mistakes?

Mike has a wonderful perspective on bloopers... check out his post of yesterday, if you haven't already. If I focus just on my creative endeavors (versus life, the universe, and everything), there's plenty of bloopers to dissect and confess.

In my first book, Silver Lies, for instance, I inadvertently added a safety to a revolver when I was looking for a quick dialogue tag to add at the last minute. The crazy thing was I knew better... but I was in a hurry and got sloppy. My bad. The flip side of this is that a reader got in touch with me after the book was published and pointed out my error (egads!). I confessed all, and then we dove into our mutual fascination with history. It turned out that the gentleman in question, Steven Crain, is a Civil War re-enactor. He invited me and my family to a re-enactment and then gave me a tour of his extensive personal library, and even trusted me with a handful of his books! Steven with his extensive knowledge proved a valuable subject matter expert when it came to my second book, Iron Ties. This second of the Silver Rush series explored the on-going emotional/psychological repercussions of the Civil War, fifteen years after its cessation.

And, I've had other bloopers called to my attention as well, including slang terminology, which didn't come into vogue into much later. I try to check all my slang, but inevitably some phrase or other slips by me. I always thank the person who calls these bloopers to my attention, because if no one tells me, I don't know, right?

This is one reason why I am so grateful for the subject matter experts, critique partners, editors, copyeditors, and proofreaders who take the time to pore over my draft scribblings: They catch many of my blunders and save me from myself!

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As you said, Ann, God bless the copy editors for the work they do. I nearly did a double take when you mentioned your acquaintance, Mr. Crane. The "other" Stephen Crane was a bit of Civil War re-enactor as well, except that their first names were spelled differently. I wonder if he gets any ribbing about that? Well done with a difficult topic.